Turkey hopes to attract Chinese tourists back after containment of COVID-19 pandemic as China is a huge market for the country’s tourism sector.
TURSAB members are looking forward to attracting Chinese tourists back to Turkey once the COVID-19 pandemic is fully contained.
“China is a huge market, and we are attaching significant importance to the country and Chinese people,” Firuz Baglikaya, head of TURSAB, the Association of Turkish Travel Agencies, said at an online press conference in Istanbul.
Baglikaya said that China and Turkey will continue to improve their already strong ties even further when everything is back to normal in the post-pandemic era.
“We have our most prestigious tour operators in China, trying to promote Turkey in the best way possible to the Chinese people,” Baglikaya said. “They would continue to prepare suitable holiday packages for them, and provide their favorite type of vacation in the best way possible.”
Baglikaya also noted that a state-run promotion office is also preparing to carry out activities in China to attract the Chinese tourists back to the country.
In 2019, Turkey received over 420,000 Chinese tourists, while the country’s annual tourism revenues hit 34.5 billion U.S. dollars, according to official data.
The Turkish government has recently launched a normalization process as the rise in daily COVID-19 cases continued to slow down.
As of last Wednesday, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Turkey reached 152,587 while the death toll rose to 4,222. (Xinhua)
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